Primary Menu

Author: drbobrinkman

This semester I'm using all 9 chapters of the current draft of Ethics in a Computing Culture. I'm supplementing this with:

Ch 3: "An Analysis of Student Privacy Rights in Plagiarism Detection" by Bo Brinkman (submitted to JSEE). "The Murderer" by Ray Bradbury (in The Golden Apples of the Sun)

Ch 5: "Computing and Accountability" by Nissenbaum (Communications of the ACM January 1994, 37(1), 73-80)

Ch 6: "The Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace" by Michael Heim (in The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality). Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan, Introduction and Chapters 1 and 4. Laws of Media by Marshall McLuhan, excerpts from Chapters 3 and 4 to introduce students to McLuhan's tetrad (particularly like the "Washing Machine" tetrad, based on Ruth Schwartz Cowan's More Work for Mother, which I have been using for years.)

Ch 8: Either Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut or The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon (student's choice).

Here is an activity that I use on the first day of class. The goal is to get students to start thinking about their values. Ethics is only useful for well-meaning people that already have some values, and want to figure out how to apply them. ...continue reading "Introductions and Values"